Chapter 3 Cassiel
Her name is something Thornvale. I’m deliberately trying to forget it. I don’t want to know her name. I don’t want to know anything about her or acknowledge her existence at all. I don’t need a guard. Why would I? I’ve always been able to protect myself. I’m not blind—this isn’t my reality.
Except, of course, it is. I know it, and I hate it.
I hate how little I can do for myself, how even my own room feels like a trap designed to ensnare me.
I had all excess furniture cleared away.
I know the number of steps to the bathing room, to the table.
That is the extent of my world now. But even knowing the number of steps, I still bump into things—knock my shoulders on the door frame, my head on the bedpost, my arms on the table.
Everything hurts more than it used to. The healers who attended me when I first lost my sight told me my other senses would adapt.
A greater awareness of pain seems a bitterly unfair compensation.
“Nothing about this is fair, Cass,” my mother told me, when I was still brave—or weak—enough to be in the same room as her.
I didn’t even do anything. I didn’t kill a faerie, didn’t accidentally insult one, as far as I know. True, my actions as my brother’s right-hand man might have resulted in harm toward them, but I’d be surprised if they knew that. Evander always tried to keep my role a secret for that exact reason.
And through the bumps and bruises is another pain—the one behind my eyes that flares up now and again, like there’s something stuck inside them.
More than the pain, I hate how the things I once loved are forever lost to me. I’ll never spar again with my brother or comrades. I’ll never ride again. I’ll never—
Don’t fixate. Don’t think about it.
But that’s the biggest problem with being blind: there’s so much time to think about everything.
Like the new guard, however much I don’t want to. Female, obviously. She sounds young. Late teens or early twenties—around my age, although voices can be misleading. She’s probably some battle-hardened woman in her thirties.
I don’t care for her.
Not because she’s particularly offensive—though the way she moaned over a bowl of peaches was an ordeal—but because she’s another in a long list of strangers imposed upon me.
Another voice to fill the air, another presence in my space.
She has a sharp-edged, restless energy and she hesitates before speaking as though she’s still deciding how to address me.
I can feel the way she watches me, the way she moves around me with careful calculation.
I hate it.
I hate how aware I have to be of people now, how I can no longer rely on my eyes to gauge expressions or intent.
I hate the endless conversations that always come back to the same thing—how are you feeling, Your Highness?
—as though the answer has ever changed. As if I can do anything but lie in response to it.
I wonder if the fey ever ask each other such pointless questions, or if they simply don’t bother to ask anything when they know the answer.
I hate my thoughts most of all.
Sleep is the only release from them. When I sleep, the blackness doesn’t feel like a prison. It feels like nothing. Blessed and unbroken.
In my dreams, I can still see. I can be anywhere, with anyone. Dancing with a pretty girl, braiding Runara’s hair by firelight, star-spotting with Evander, in the knight’s hall with my mother. She leans over me as she teaches me how to shoot.
I used to be a decent shot with a bow.
Sometimes I even see my father, although his face grew hazy long before I lost my sight. I’d have forgotten it entirely if it wasn’t for his portrait.
In my dreams, the day is the nightmare.
It has been months, but it still feels like something new. Something that slithers around the edges of my mind, coiling tighter each night. No light beneath my door, no flicker of a candle against my shut eyelids. No difference between the inside of my room and the space behind my ribs.
I let my breath slow, reaching for the silence, for the empty embrace of sleep.
Through the wall, I hear my new guard moving, inspecting her new chambers, no doubt. There’s a rustle of something as she steps back into the room. Towards the writing desk, I think.
It’s useless to me now—both the desk and everything on it—but it’s one of the few frivolous pieces in my room I haven’t gotten rid of.
I just like knowing it’s there. My father’s words are still with me.
I’ll probably give the books to Runara when she’s old enough to appreciate them. She doesn’t have anything from him, nothing with his words or with his love.
There’s a light knock on the door, and I hear the relief guard coming in. Dain. I’d recognise his voice anywhere. I’ve grown good at that, and I’ve known Dain for years, long before I lost my sight.
I hear him telling the new guard about my accident. Good. At least she won’t have to ask me. At least she knows.
I’m surprised to hear she’s fought fey before.
Not many stray beyond the borders of the forest, and most of them are careful to conceal themselves when walking amongst us mere mortals.
They tend to be good in a fight, or skilled at using trickery if not.
It’s unusual to fight one and escape unscathed.
I hope she hurt them.